A Series Of Ghost Rider's Essays

This is what one of the sanest individuals (and freelancers) wrote on his blog. I'm putting it here for 2 reasons:
1. He deleted his blog from lj
2. For the most part his ideas resonate with me.
3. They are very-well put. I'd say professionaly.

Getting Organized  It's Monday again and last week I promised to myself that I would try and get organized this week, or rather that I would try and begin getting organized by which I mean that I want to be able to decide what I'm going to do and when I'm going to do it and then stick to my schedule. It can become quite a daunting task when you are a freelancer rather than a 9 to 5 drone. I spend most of my time working to deadlines and procrastination has scourged me from time immemorial and yet I can never seem to get over it. I make plans about how I'm going to break down my work into pieces and then do a little each day over a reasonable long period of time but almost invariably I end up putting it off until it becomes clear that unless I start immediately I will miss all the deadlines. Curiously in some of my projects, especially those that involve writing programs this approach can actually work better than starting early; I found that with software, before you can produce a really elegant piece of code you want to allow yourself some time for brainstorming the problem without actually writing any code, sometimes just let it simmer in the back of your head while you're doing something else, like watching a movie or writing a lj entry. Anyways, still I think that organization is essential, even procrastination is better when it's planned procrastination. Plus I really like that line that Arny Schwarznegger once  delivered to the waiting journalists at some film event as he walked past them down the red carpet and they stuck their microphones out at him, he said, "Everything's under control" OK, I know in real life nothing is really under control, but the illusion of control which we can create by making plans and sticking to them can be quite comforting, it's like after a while you actually begin to believe you know what's going to happen to you.
 Time's a flying One thing probably everyone notices as we get older is how much faster time seems to pass as we advance in years. And there's this peculiar feeling as you remember some events from several years ago, some memories are so vivid that it seems that it all just happened yesterday. I was just thinking about 2005 as I looked at a link to some book that was published in 2005 I caught myself thinking, oh, it's a new book and then I remembered it's already 2009 now and the book actually came out more than three years ago and it being a computer book it's probably already obsolete, in the IT industry things seems to be changing at such an astonishing pace I can hardly keep up.
What is a person? What is it that makes us who we are, is it our principles and beliefs? Is it our prejudices and superstitions? Or is it maybe something else, or maybe our personalities are just an illussion as stipulated in Bhuddism? It so happens somtimes that when a person does something that contradicts their own ideas about themselves they begin to feel totally disoriented, they can no longer trust themselves, because once they already did something they could never have expected of themselves and which on top of that also caused pain to people they at least thought they cared about. It's a major drama. Yet I think if one wants to be happy one just has to go ahead and be happy. Like Henry Ford said, whether you think you can or you think you can't you're right. It can sometimes be difficult trying to reconcile ourselves with the fact that we are not constant, but rather constantly changing and what we were fond of at one time we may well end up hating after a while. It's just part o flife, there's not a lot we can do about it. And yet people repeatedly delude themselves into thinking they can hold on to sets of beliefs or to the same lovers forever. No can do. Fuck it. I think I'll just have to try and seer clear of these sorts of situations in the future and these sorts of people probably too. They can be interesting and fascinating at first but after a while they can become a major pain in the ass. It's fuck all. you can't even have proper sex with them after a while cause they're no longer interested, lethargic and begin to treat you like shit. It's more relaxing to just jerk off in the privacy of one's bathroom, or hire a prostitute who just does as she's told.
Fear eats soul When things aren't going according to plan and you're driven to the edge of poverty, fear becomes your worst enemy. They say fear is an acronym which stands for false expectations appearing real. The hard truth is, those expectations are not always entirely false, however, if you're convinced deep down that those expectations you fear the most may eventually turn out to be true, chances are your conviction may actually make them become true. It's a thin thread you've got to walk between being delusional and desperate. Sometimes there's no other choice though. It's true that even hope goes eventually but as long as you're alive things may still begin to improve one day. Yet fear, it's got the power to paralyze you at the worst possible moment, making you miss opportunities which may in fact be crucial in your situation. As I watch the current economic crisis unfold I'm beginning to thing that what it's feeding off primarily is human fear rather than anything else, and since the modern financial system depends to such great extent on trust, as soon as people get scared everything just begins to crumble, and then the whole situation goes into a vicious self perpetuating circle of people's fears becoming reality and thereby making people even more afraid.

No comments:

Post a Comment